Tag Archives: forest management

This fire season in California has been epic in the worst possible way. Not only did we have the state’s largest recorded wildfire, the Ranch Fire, but we’ve had the most destructive fire, the Camp Fire. During any prior year the Carr fire would have been the most destructive fire in California, but this year has been exceptionally bad for wildfires.

I was out checking in on one of our salvage logging contractors on the Carr Fire last week. The timber salvage operations are well under way. Click on the gallery of images to read about it.

This view is from the Highland Ridge Road looking down at the Community of French Gulch. Over the course of a couple weeks the fire made a run at the town three separate times. Many homes were destroyed.

The Carr Fire left hundreds of millions of board feet of dead timber in it’s wake.

It’s like a ghost forest.

Bark beetles immediately invaded the fire killed trees. In the spring they will spread the many of the surviving trees.

This is one of many of our salvage loggers. It is imperative to get the wood to the mills as fast as we can. It begins to deteriorate as soon as it’s dead. The tractor is skidding trees to the processor,. The processor cuts the trees into logs, while the loader sorts the logs into decks.

Here the processor manufactures trees into logs.

A couple of big logs waiting to be skidded into the landing.

On steeper ground we use track laying skid cats to move the trees to the landing. The land around Redding that burned is very steep.

The logs get sorted by size and species while waiting to be delivered to the mill.

The trees don’t always burn completely during the fire, but the heat alone is enough to kill them.

This part of the forest had been thinned before the fire. By spacing out the remaining trees the fire burned at a lower intensity. The fire wasn’t as hot, the flames were smaller, and the remaining trees were resilient enough to survive the fire. Thinning these trees in a logging operation saved them.

Even now, weeks after the fire was contained there are still hot spots out in the burn. We may still find some hot spots in the spring.

Since I wrote this post the rains began in earnest. Our fire season has come to brutal end.

With all the fires burning in California there has been a lot of discussion about logging to reduce forest fuel. Doing so makes our forests more fire resilient. There is fear among many people that logging of any kind will destroy our forest. The truth is the the fires are destroying our forests. This is a short video of such a logging operation from last year on the Lassen National Forest. The Forest Service prepared this project. Our company bought and logged the timber sale. The result is a healthier more resilient forest.

This story appeared on KREM2 in Spokane. I’m heartened to see a support for an active strategy to deal with the wildfire dilemma. In defiance of popular conventional wisdom that harvesting trees is a bad thing. Finally, using harvesting as a tool for healthier forests. It too long overdue in the minds of the public.

When I write about forestry, I’m most often sharing what goes on in a working forest. A working forest is one that produces commodities, like timber, fiber and bark, as well as provides for environmental benefits such as recreation, clean water and wildlife habitat. I have spent my career on working forests.

A working forest with plantations containing trees in all different life stages.

Think of a working forest like a farm. Farms grow crops of food and other agricultural products. We need farms for our food. Working forests produce forest products and we need them for our shelter. An important difference between the two is that forestlands take years to produce a crop. Working forests spend years growing undisturbed in between intervals of harvesting. They function as an important source of clean water and as a home for wildlife every year.

There’s a future house on the back of that truck.

One benefit of producing forest products from a working forest is that it creates income for the landowner. When the landowner has an economic return from managing trees the land will continue to be managed as a forest. There are real costs to owning forestland and if the owner can’t profit managing their forest, they may be forced to develope it into housing subdivisions or some other non-forest use. Then the wildlife habitat may be lost. In a sense the income from producing forest products protects these forests by making growing trees economically sustainable .

This forested area has been subdivided for homes.

All of our forests are important as wildlife habitat. The conventional wisdom is that mature forest provide the best habitat. That is true for species of wildlife that prefer mature forests. However, many species have different habitat needs that include forest at every age.

A dusky grouse.

Forests containing a greater diversity in habitats ranging from mature forest to freshly created openings will support a larger variety of species. Openings are created during harvesting. These openings are planted and then the seedlings begin to grow. Over time the forests develope a great diversity of trees in different age groups. This patchwork of different habitat is available to support many species of wildlife.

Working forests aren’t parks, but can still be available for recreation. Hikers, campers and hunters visit these forests year after year. I’m not saying that the working forests are better than the parks, but they each have unique purposes.

This is on the Mendocino National Forest. Our national forests are also working forest.

Forests are managed by different government agencies, private entities and individuals with a variety of goals. Forestland management is a topic I will explore more in the future. It warrants a full post.

Redwood National Park may not be a working forest, however even they use logging as a tool to achieve the long term goal of growing a healthy resilient forest.

If you’re out in the woods and you find a big W painted on a tree, just remember W is for wildlife. When planning and laying out a timber harvest, foresters have to protect the other resources in the forest, … Continue reading →

I was in the concrete jungle of San Francisco today. It was a cool gray day with lots and lots of folks. I looked at the dense pack living conditions of the big city and I missed all the space I have in my normal life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I understand a lot of people love living in the city. Different strokes for different folks and all of that. However, a trip to SF makes me appreciate my daily contact with nature. At my home and at my work. It is a blessing to be sure. It seems to me that the people in the big cities must feel disconnected from nature in a way that makes a person want to protect, treasure and guard it. I think that experiencing it in this way doesn’t leave many people with a true understanding of nature. At a very basic level I wish that everyone had to go out hunt, kill, clean, cook and eat an animal. Honestly I believe people would have a greater appreciation of their daily sustenance.

Mandrill at the San Francisco Zoo.

In my firefighter days, many years ago, I worked with a fellow from SF. He had never left the city before to spend any meaningful time in a rural environment. He was a very capable guy and after we left our fire training camp I was stationed in Redding and he in Ogo. Ogo was a fire station West of Redding and was well known for it’s great population of rattlesnakes. A few days later, both our crews responded to the same fire. He seemed a little tired, but otherwise in good spirits. About two weeks later the Redding crew was on a fire with the Ogo crew again, but I didn’t see my friend. I ask about him. His other crew members told me he hadn’t been sleeping well because it was too quiet at night, but when the coyotes would howl in the middle of the night he would fly out of bed in a panic. After about ten days he couldn’t take it anymore. He packed up and went home. I never saw him again and the old Ogo Fire Station is long gone. He never took the time to get comfortable in that setting. It was sad, but maybe I would have trouble making the same adjustment to living in the city.

I saw this log truck rolling through the Bay Area. Just a little reminder of where wood comes from.

I wish folks from the cities in California trusted our land managers more. The people I work with love nature as much as anyone and take great pride in the job they do. Instead, in a time when the science and technology have reached a point that we can accomplish amazing things in the woods, politically we are forced to do a more and more mediocre job by trying to create conditions where no one can make a mistake.

Unfortunately, the desire protect the natural environment by stopping land management is resulting in loving our forest to death. Death by uncontrollable fires and bark beetle epidemics. People need to view land management as a tool to improve our forests where people are part of this ecosystem and not as an obstacle to a healthy forest.